We warmly invite you to participate in ‘Signs of Hope for Peace’ – a live broadcast from Meditation Mount in Ojai, with featured guests Dot Maver (National Peace Academy and Global Silent Minute), Fumi Johns Stewart (May Peace Prevail on Earth) and Mandy Kahn (peace poet and writer-in-residence at the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles). This deep dialogue on ‘The Presence of Peace’ was hosted by Michael Lindfield (Board President – Meditation Mount).
Duration: 62 Minutes
Dr. Dot Maver
Founder – National Peace Academy and Global Silent Minute Initiative
Dr. Dot Maver is an educator and peacebuilder whose keynote is inspiring cooperation on behalf of the common good. Dot is a co-founder of the Global Silent Minute, National Peace Academy USA, Global Alliance for Ministries and Infrastructures of Peace, the River Phoenix Center for Peacebuilding, and the Seven Ray Institute. Her work in education, politics and grassroots community organizing is focused on applied peacebuilding utilizing a shared responsibility and shared leadership model.
Fumi Johns Stewart
Executive Director – May Peace Prevail On Earth International
Fumi Johns Stewart is Executive Director of May Peace Prevail On Earth International promoting MAY PEACE PREVAIL ON EARTH activities worldwide. Fumi grew up in Japan with a sincere wish to bridge the two cultures of her American and Japanese parentage and to promote peaceful coexistence between all peoples. She introduced the May Peace Prevail On Earth movement and The Peace Pole Project of Japan to the international community and assisted in opening the International Headquarters of May Peace Prevail International in the state of New York in 1988. Fumi also serves as US liaison to sister organization, the Go Peace Foundation of Japan and the Fuji Sanctuary.
Mandy Kahn
Mandy Kahn is a poet and peace advocate based in Los Angeles.
Kahn is the author of two collections of poems—Glenn Gould’s Chair and Math, Heaven, Time—both from London-based poetry press Eyewear. Her work has been included in the Best American Poetry anthology series, and in former Poet Laureate Ted Kooser’s syndicated column American Life in Poetry.
In addition to writing books, Kahn regularly presents immersive poems: live works of literature that incorporate performance, audience participation and musical technique. In 2019, Kahn presented a program of immersive and interactive poems at the Getty Museum; her Getty presentation was called “Gateways to Peace,” and was performed by a cast of seven actors and three opera singers.
Kahn is the Writer-in-Residence at the Philosophical Research Society, a center for spiritual discourse founded in 1934 by wisdom scholar Manly P. Hall. She teaches a free, weekly online class on the nature of peace for the PRS called Peace Class, and regularly presents peace-building concerts on the grounds that features poetry, classical music and immersive performance.
She is the subject of Courtney Sell’s feature-length documentary “Peace Piece: The Immersive Poems of Mandy Kahn,” which was released by Indie Pix, and is available for streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Google Play, and elsewhere, and is also available as a DVD.
Kahn often collaborates to make new works that combine poetry and classical music. She’s made several works with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Ellen Reid, including the opera Modern Odysseus. She was also a librettist for MacArthur grantee Yuval Sharon’s mobile opera Hopscotch.
She has given readings at Cambridge University, the London Review Bookshop and Shoreditch House in the UK, at Motto in Berlin, at Colette in Paris, at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, at the New School in New York, at the Barrick Museum in Las Vegas, and at many venues in Southern California.
Kahn has been interviewed by BBC Radio, the Los Angeles Review of Books and Flaunt magazine, among others, and she is the recipient of the 2018 Shakespeare Prize in Poetry. The Shakespeare Prize is awarded annually to a poet or playwright based in the county of Los Angeles; other recipients include Tom Stoppard, Ray Bradbury and Dana Gioia.
Mandy Kahn lives in Los Angeles, where she was also born and raised. She holds a B.A. in English from UC Berkeley and considers herself profoundly Californian.
Michael Lindfield
Board President – Meditation Groups Inc.
Michael Lindfield is a highly regarded consultant and coach helping unleash the creativity of the human spirit to meet the needs of our times and the call of the future. He learned his craft from a range of experiences that include: a 14-year residency as a gardener and as Director of Education at the Findhorn Community in Scotland; small-scale organic farming in western Sweden; conducting seminars and presenting at conferences around the world on the theme of ‘transforming self and society’ and as a senior organization development consultant with The Boeing Company from 1989-2005.